Bayonetta 3 and Metroid Prime 4 are easily two of the most eagerly-anticipated upcoming Switch games, but we've previously assumed that both wouldn't be arriving for quite some time.

However, according to a website post from Nintendo's Norway branch - managed by local distributor Bergsala - these games are scheduled for release this year:

The year 2017 has definitely been Nintendo’s year and we are looking forward to 2018, which will include new games like Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4 and Kirby: Star Allies as well as many other games that we will reveal during the year.

We should point out that this message has been translated via Google, and that process could well have changed some of the meaning behind the original Norwegian. Indeed, someone has pointed out that a Swedish translation of the same passage of text comes out a little differently:

The Swedish version of roughly the same text says ”we already know that Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4 and a new Pokémon game are under development for the Switch”. pic.twitter.com/Q8jM2VgEqU— Niklas Sintorn (@niklassintorn) January 5, 2018

However, taken as it is, the message would appear to suggest that both games will be released in 2018.

What do you think? Is this a hint that both games will come this year, or do you think it's simply a case of a poor English translation? Maybe the person who wrote the original post at Bergsala has made a mistake? Either way, we expect we'll see solid release details for both games during the next Nintendo Direct.

Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.

would it be really that hard for a professional website to seek out someone who can translate from Norwegian before posting this based on google translate? just so unprofessional.
western websites post machine translations of japanese information all the time. really? are people not talking to each other at all? there are millions of people who speak any one language (and billions in the case of chinese). they can't ask one of them to translate? we're not talking about long lost languages here that no one or only scholars can speak anymore.
this is like the Chinese family who just arrived in the US and opens a restaurant and can't ask a single English speaking American to check their menu for mistakes..

@LeRaposaTo be fair, we know absolutely nothing about when it started production. We don't even know which studio is handling it.

Which of course also means that it might not even BE in production yet, only in planning stages on a management stage. Which really would be rather unlike Nintendo, to announce a game before they could be sure it would release, but hey, they did it with Smash Bros. for Wii.

Why would Metroid releasing this year be so hard to believe? Just because they only showed us a title at E3 doesn't mean anything. Remember Reggie said at E3 it was a 2018 title before someone at Nintendo said it was said in error. Previous statements by the Metroid creator that the game hasn't started development also mean nothing really. They would say that so not to spoil the surprise. Basically we know nothing. The game could come this year or it might not. If the rumours are correct that there will be a trailer in the next Direct my money's on it coming this year.

@manu0 professional translators are not cheap. The site will have a certain budget to stick to from their overlords and a post on a site that may or may not confirm something probably wouldn't get clearance.

@Shufty you don't need a professional translator for this. you literally can pick anyone who speaks norwegian: "hey, does this machine translation make sense?". but even that is too much to ask for almost all websites. it's not rocket science. this is not about translating a norwegian novel to english. it's one sentence.

As long as they'll be released eventually (aka Bayonetta 3 NOT going the way of Scalebound), and as long as there is plenty of worthwhile content available on the Switch, I don't really care whether they make it out this year. I rather get a quality and meaty experience over a rushed one any day.

Not to mention that Metroid seems very unlikely to say the least. Bayonetta 3 though ... unlikely I'd say, but not entirely impossible. I mean, it would make sense to try to get Bayonetta 3 out within a certain timeframe after the collection is released. Obviously not too close to that, but also not too far apart.

Still, ultimately this is a secondary marketing consideration, and other considerations, like managing the overall release schedule and the pace of the development itself, will be way more decisive.

I wonder if the Metroid Trilogy will see a re-release on the Switch in the meantime though. Either as a GC-VC title or as a straight up port. Again, unlikely, but equally not impossible.

All of this speculation just proves, that folks are really curious where the system will be going next, so it seems like it is truly high time for a next Direct - covering more than just future mobile plans!

@Majima I know, that's why I'm wondering what the original text said. I'm not Norwegian, but I could verify it.

Anyway, the thing is, it's never Nintendo's US website that says ''Metroid Prime 4 is coming in 2018!'' - signed Reggie. It has to be their Norwegian site, a website they don't even manage themselves, in a language apparently no one speaks, because we still need to deal with whatever Google Translate farts out, and without a screen-cap of course. Let's not create a situation in which someone could actually confirm any of this. Guys, it's 2018, I had hoped journalism would improve this year!

Funny how everyone assumes Prime 4 only just started development. Just because they didn't show anything doesn't mean it hasn't been in the works for 2 years now. This new Nintendo doesn't like showing game footage of anything the last couple years until it's less then one year till launch. I feel like they learned from announcing BotW far too soon and it not coming out for years later.

Now I'm not saying Prime 4 is coming this year but I won't be surprised either. After all, Reggie has been saying for a few years now we haven't forgot about Metroid!

@Spoony_Tech''For certain games, games that will be in development for, let’s call it a decent amount of time, like Metroid Prime 4 — also, given that it’s a franchise that we know people have been very eager to get some news — that’s when, fine, we’ll share it. We’ll share it early. Others, we want to hold closer in and reveal it when the gameplay is going to be available. It literally is game by game, title by title, how we make that decision.'' - Reggie Fils-Aimé

Remember when Super Mario Odyssey was announced in January 2017 for the first time. No one believed it would be released that same year, Nintendo surprised everyone by committing to its October release. Same thing with Xenoblade 2. They seem to have bought into the approach of announcing and showing titles that will be released in the near future... could this be the same for Metroid 4 which was announced way back at E3 of last year??? Perhaps

@Shufty We don't need professional translators to translate 2 sentences about video games from a video game site. A native speaker and gamer will do just fine. You need professional translators to translate a book, an official video game published in other languages or a scientific thesis in a university.

@Savlep99 Very valid point here. SMO was a great marketing coup. It can happen with Metroid again, or, on the other hand, Metroid could be like BotW with a long waiting time. In the end, it doesn't matter: Both games became excellent.

Lol. Anyone that think's they decide to make a game and the first thing they come up with is the logo is deluded! By that logic, that Pokémon fella must have adlibbed an announcement as the camera panned to him. The game is probably much further along than we suspect. I just hope it's as grandiose and convention breaking as Zelda.

@ThanosReXXX I know, but the Tweet in this very article already mentioned that the screencapped text is in Swedish, and is not the original Norwegian text all of this is based on. I appreciate the effort though!

@BensonUii There is nothing to translate unfortunately. Nobody grabbed a screenshot it seems. All we have is a small paragraph from Nintendo's Swedish website that mentions Metroid Prime 4, Bayonetta 3 and Pokemon are in development for Switch. But we already knew that!

Norwegian here and I can say that the text have been changed and as far as the original Norwegian text I haven't seen yet, but I think even from the English text, it seems to me more like the text is saying that more games are going to be revealed in 2018, not launched. The word launch isn't even in the English text.

@Pod They also did that during the E3 2011 conference when Iwata announced that Sakurai's next game after his team finished Kid Icarus Uprising was going to be Smash 4. It really bugs me to this day people were expecting a trailer for Smash 4 in E3 2012 even though the game was barely in development at that point. But hey those certain fans of Smash Bros. have always been this obnoxiously impatient.

We haven't had a Wii MotionPlus WarioWare game (the possibilities!!!!!!!!!!!!!), we haven't had a 3D WarioWare game, and Game & Wario on Wii U felt like a pack-in game/tech demo that had some fantastic ideas, but never really harnessed any of those ideas to their full potential (Gamer, Sketch and Camera are well worth the price of admission though).

@GrailUK It's just the Prime font with a four, how's that difficult to come up with? My guess, it wasn't even made by the devs, but something an intern threw together a few days before the E3 Direct, that's what it looked like at least lol.

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, that text is Swedish, which is my mother tongue. It simply states that all those games are in development, not that they're due for release this year. The fact that nobody seems able to find the original Norwegian original text suggests that they did indeed misspeak about the Metroid and Bayo 3 release dates. Those crazy Norwegians...

I'd like to hear the news from Nintendo themselves, of course. I really, REALLY didn't believe Xenoblade Chronicles 2 would've been announced and released in the same year, so I have to recognize that the possibility at least exists. Also, XC2 was a 2nd party game in which Monolith received help from Nintendo in some capacity, which likely helped the game release like it did-- PlatinumGames has collaborated previously with Nintendo for Bayo 2, so it's very possible Bayo 3 has been in the works for some time now. Metroid Prime 4 will be a little tougher to nail down as we still don't know the dev behind it or when the project actually began. Either way, with my backlog, I'm content to wait it out until I hear more.

@Spoony_Tech totally agree with you. This new era of Nintendo seems to like to announce and deliver while the iron is hot. Slightly off topic, but I could even see them releasing Yoshi and Kirby by March and May.

@ThanosReXXX That's Swedish, not Norwegian x) I'm an Norwegian, but I can still translate what it says. Since Swedish and Norwegian are very similar.

It says: Such a good start for the Nintendo Switch and the future looks bright for the console. We know about games such ass Bayonetta 3, Metriod Prime 4 and a Pokemon game is under development to the Nintendo Switch, and also games such ass Kirby: Star Allies and a game starring Yoshi

If the switch is easy to program like Ninty say then maybe development time don't take as long as many may think. I myself think Prime will make it for the 2018 holidays, it will be their big chrimbo game

@Octane The original message is indeed nowhere to be found anymore, but Wario64, the one who tweeted about this, does have a screenshot of that translation:The first part of that text is actually still present on the Norwegian site on the bottom of the page, so they indeed seem to have removed the second part mentioning Bayonetta 3 and Metroid Prime 4.

Both could have been in development for a few years now , Nintendo have said that they want to speed up development of games , so it's not a massive leap to think that bayonetta 3 and metriod prime 4 could be released this year.

@ThanosRexxx and everyone really. Sorry to be this guy, but I think it's interesting; English, the language I presume the majority are speaking/writing here, is really more closely related to Norwegian/Scandinavian languages in general than any other Language Group. Though there are strong influences from French/Gaulish languages, and Romance Languages.http://sciencenordic.com/english-scandinavian-language

If Nintendo SOMEHOW manages to get Boyonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, AND Pokemon all out this year... They might just have a repeat of 2017 this year. I'm already happy enough with just Kirby and Yoshi for now tbh. Still wprking on my backlog from the last few console / handheld generations.

I did read that article, though. But as an American living in the Netherlands (and speaking fluent Dutch, as well as German, French and obviously English), I find some of their findings pretty damn far-fetched, and I only agree with a small part of it.

A lot of Scandinavian actually has way more resemblance to German, Dutch and Frysian, a sub-language of a region in between Germany and the Netherlands. Grammatical structure is kind of the main driving force of that article, but there are dozens of languages that use the same structure, both in Europe and elsewhere, so that's complete bull to me.

And they also say that certain things can't be said in a certain way in Dutch, which is also incorrect, to which I can personally attest, being a fluent speaker of that language.

And then using the argument "Have you considered how easy it is for Norwegians to learn English?" to show how the languages are supposedly so closely related.

Also complete BS. The Dutch are also pretty good at learning and speaking English, some even almost without accent, and reversely, the Scandinavians are actually pretty good at speaking Dutch.

The Dutch soccer competition has quite a few Scandinavian players, and all of them speak Dutch fluently.

@LeRaposa on the contrary, I dont think Nintendo would have shown the teaser if it were only recently in development. I would believe they started development for WiiU and decided early on the focus on it being a Switch title.

Nintendo also seems to be working around a new strategy where they show a game and release it within 6-8 month window. Mario Odyssey, Rabbids, Arms, Splatoon 2 etc were all developed for Switch and released in the same year, this is not something Nintendo usually does.

Keep in mind, they need big guns for this year because Mario and Zelda are already used up. So Metroid would definitely be on the menu but probably for october release.

They will show it on Nintendo direct soon, it will be a playable title at E3 and released later in the year.

I wouldnt be surprised if they teased us with Donkey Kong soon, since they are playing on their nostalgia momentum.

@ThanosReXXX Well I quit the other site so now I'm spending twice as much time on here.

Actually twice would be impossible as I was spending 13 hours a day on here before so I'm trying to get it down to a manageable amount. 2 snow days in a row is making me a bit stir crazy. I got hit w/ the double whammy of bombogenisis and the polar vortex. Happy New Year to the east coast. Hope yours is off to a better start.

What I take away from this article is the final name for Kirby's new game is Star Allies, but I find the 2nd translation not including Kirby but instead mentioning Pokémon leads me to believe "Pokémon Stars Confirmed"

@ThanosReXXX You got me interested in that article. I read it, and I have to agree. That was some lousy research that amounted to nothing more then ''Norwegian people can learn English, therefore it's a Scandinavian language.''

The word order, for example, is an interesting point though. But I think the writer of the article completely glances over the fact that English is influenced by French far more than any other Germanic language. The concept of placing the object after the verb is not unique to the northern German languages either:

I have readthe book.J'ai lule livre.[Io] ho lettoil libro.

Who's to say that's not the result of the influence from French? What if that's an universal rule within the Indo-European languages, and it's just the Dutch and German languages that are the exception?

@TommyTLG Nothing to lol about, Mr. Late to the Party. Several people have already pointed that out long before you, so you could have saved yourself the trouble if you had actually taken the time to read more of the comments instead of rushing to react to mine.

And like I already said, most of us don't speak any Scandinavian language, so that makes it even dumber to ridicule someone who makes an unintended mistake about it.

@Octane You're welcome. And trust me, Dutch isn't the exception, it is actually quite similar to most of the Scandinavian languages, and so is German. I'm pretty sure that most Dutch and German members on here would recognize words in that Swedish Tweet.

Agreed on the influences of the French and/or Indo-European. But there are so many more influences than that beneath it: French and other languages of course being based on Latin, and Latin itself again being based on even older languages, so the article is WAY too short-sighted in that respect.

@rjejr Quit that other site? Push Square? Really? Well, if that's the case, then I'm almost impressed seeing you being all over Sony these days...

As for my holidays: well, Christmas and New Year's Eve were kinda tough on my old man, considering the circumstances, so of course that had it's effect on me too.

I did get a nice Christmas bonus from him, so I was finally able to get that other, not-PS4 console, that I still wanted to get, besides the Switch, obviously, but I found that was just too expensive in comparison.

Other than that, we had a couple of nice dinners and family evenings, so we had some good times as well. And before it's too late: Happy New Year to you too, hope your health is going to improve.

As for the weather on your side of the pond: in the news today, I saw entire streets of cars frozen in blocks of sea water, so can't say that I'm jealous that we don't have any snow over here. Didn't even had anything even remotely resembling a white Christmas, but I'm good anyways...

@ThanosReXXX Oh, I know! I was talking about the specific rule that you cannot place a subject after a perfect tense in Dutch, or German. These two languages are unique in that regard, as far as my knowledge on linguistics go at least.

Nothing to see here. It seems Nintendo's Finnish branch has the same text as the Swedish one, and the Norwegian version is identical as well except for the sentence that discusses Switch's future. That one is completely missing on the Norwegian version atm. I'd wager things have gone down something like this:

>Bergsala distributes a press release celebrating year 2017 to all of its Nordic branches>These translate the text for their domestic markets. >For some reason the Norwegian one goes rogue on its translation of this one paragraph.>All hell breaks loose on the internet.>Someone pushes a panic button in Oslo and removes the whole paragraph.

@Octane Mostly not, no. Although in Dutch, there are a couple of exceptions, and when I read that article, I could actually come up with a couple of them off the top of my head (that counter what was being claimed by the article).

Don't know about German, though. I do speak the language, but not fluently. The only language other than my native tongue that I speak fluently, is Dutch. But I consider that to be nothing more than normal, considering I've been living here for almost 37 years now...

Wait, so Nintendo Norway said "We know these games will release on Switch."? Like... Why would the Norway branch waste their time making such a tweet in the first place? Everyone knows they're coming to Switch. Or does the link provide further clarity on why they'd suddenly say so? Either way, I can't see this being news if thats the case.

Well considering trends, with the exception of BotW, lately when Nintendo reveals a game, it comes out within the year of its announcement. Odyssey, Xeno 2, ARMS, Splatoon 2. I honestly did not expect Xeno 2 to make out by the end if 2017, and a Dec 1 release date seemed to me like a placeholder until Nintendo stuck to it. I have high hopes for what I know is coming, and moreso for what I don't know.

I've heard that Metroid Prime 4 is currently in a showable form. That doesn't mean the game will be released this year, but it does indicated that the game has been in development for longer than many expected.

The only official word on the matter is that the game is “now in development”. The fact that Nintendo chose not to share any footage, or indeed show any fanfare, means one of two things; the game was not polished enough to preview, or Nintendo would rather save the ‘reveal’ for a time when it wouldn’t be overshadowed by other content.

The only thing stopping Nintendo from releasing a Metroid game for Wii U was that it would be a wasted opportunity for what is already a smaller (but still dedicated) fan base. It would make more sense for them to begin developing ideas for the game during this period with the intention of beginning developing when the Switch hardware was finalised.

Comparisons with BoTW and SMO are silly. BoTW was a dual-platform release, and SMO has a much greater appeal and is a guaranteed system seller - hence why Nintendo generated buzz on a regular basis.

Unless Nintendo has specifically said when they started development of Metroid Prime 4 I don't think we can assume it won't be released in 2018. The first time we even knew that Mario Odyssey was a thing was during the Switch reveal trailer. The game was released a little over a year later.

Perhaps they could have shown us MP4 footage at E3 but didn't because they actually had enough to games coming out in 2017 that they felt they could stick with just focusing on those games. It would make sense to reveal games later in development so that they can be more confident on when it will be released instead of showing off games, and then delaying them multiple times in order to make them better causing fans to get frustrated when they have to wait years instead of months to get that game they know is coming eventually.

Of course all of that is just speculation and maybe just a little wishful thinking because it would be awesome if MP4 came out in 2018 (providing they didn't cut corners).

Though when I think about it, I don't really know of any first party titles coming out in 2018. There was a Yoshi game I think but other than that I can't think of any. They probably don't have a major first party game per month like 2017 but surely they didn't just pile all there games into 2017 without planning out 2018. They did say they learned some valuable lessons from the WiiU era right?

I went to Michigan for Christmas, slid on some unplowed snow, hit a curb, $480 car repair bill. And now my brake pads are gone, probably another $500, gotta wait for it to thaw out first and the 16" of snow to melt. Glad you got to have a few laughs w/ family under the circumstances, always tough.

I hope Prime 4 is closer to the original Prime than Prime 3 in its overall design and presentation. Metroid Prime was amazing: the environment, the way the story/lore was in the background and digested via log entries, the feeling of isolation. It really did seem to be a true Metroid game transitioned perfectly into 3D. Prime 3 on the other hand was awful and I couldn't finish it. It had cut scenes, loads of other (terrible) characters, talking! Completely ruined the feeling of a Metroid game. I felt less like Samus Aran and more like one of the Jetsons.

@rjejr Translated? You mean the whole removed piece of text? I already put up the translation of that text in one of my previous comments in this thread, so that's done and dusted, but it was probably... ahem... fake news...

And we're the old guys, why would they block us? I am grumpy sometimes, but I never (far as I know) cross the line into being ban material, or being told off. Well, at least: not anymore...

@ThanosReXXX I was referring to the oft off-topic comments between the 2 of us, not our language. Anything not 100% focused on the article was getting me constantly scolded on PS. Can't even talk about E3 during E3 unless you are talking about whatever game the article is taking about. "Stop derailing the thread" was the usual reply I got. It's 1 of the reasons I stopped.

I doubt they will release in 2018, it doesn't seem that either Bayo 3 and MP4 are very far in development, or they would have shown gameplay already, specially for Prime 4 since the rumors indicate that it barely got out of preproduction little time before E3.

@SimplyCinnamon53 Thanks for the compliment, but personally, I don't see four as many, even though it's probably above average. And I only speak two of them fluently. I can get by in German and French, but there's plenty of stuff that I don't know how to formulate in those languages.

As for learning them: well, to be honest, personally, the quickest way for me was reading comics and/or simple books, and talking to people, first starting out learning words and expressions, and then trying to communicate with them in their own language, asking them only to switch to English if I couldn't reply to them or got stuck. Putting yourself out there and communicating is hard at times, but it offers the quickest reward, since people appreciate the effort and as such will also be more willing to help you out with the things you don't know.

And after having started with the simpler books (besides comics, children's books and so on, with lots of pictures) I moved on to magazines and from that to regular books, text-only, so less pictures with every step.

Strange as it may sound, it's also how I keep my English up to speed, since over here, 90% of my communication is in Dutch, so you run the risk of one of your languages getting a bit rusty, even your native tongue. So hanging around on an international game website is also quite beneficial...

I think people should rate messages like this:Japanese leaksEnglish leaksSpanish leaksEverything else

It's nothing against other languages or people, it's just based on the relative importance of those markets to Nintendo. Japan is obviously their priority, then the English speaking communities, then Spanish, and then everyone else.

"With such a good start for Nintendo Switch, and such good sales, it bodes well for the future. We already know that games such as Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, and one Pokémon game are in development for the Nintendo Switch, as well as Kirby: Star Allies and one game with Yoshi as the protagonist."

I honestly don't know how anyone managed to interpret it that differently, since Google Translate doesn't mess it up that bad on its own.

@Savlep99
"Remember when Super Mario Odyssey was announced in January 2017 for the first time. No one believed it would be released that same year, (...)"
I never saw anyone not believing it would be out in 2017. On the contrary. A lot of people thought Nintendo was holding it back (which is a common thing to do). After the January presentation there even were rumors about the game being pretty much done.

@GravyThief
Prime 3 is by far the best of the Prime series. I don't want Samus to become like Doom-Guy-Space-Marine who simply shoots and does things just because. Prime 3 gave her more personality and showed that she is actually part of a living, modern society and that the entire universe does not just consists of dead civilizations from the past. I want Samus and the Metroid universe to be and feel alive.
And the cut scenes you've mentioned: Not really. Not a lot, not long, not really much talking.

I think Bayonetta 3 and Metroid 4 will come out this year. Everyone here is saying they won't as if it's a fact but at the current moment we know nothing about how far into development both games are. Sometimes being positive is good. 👍🏼

Was their any other announcement for Prime 4 other than the one at E3? The reveal said “now in development.” Sounds pretty vague to me. They could’ve started in 2016 for all we know. If it comes out in 2018, cool! If not, I’ll keep playing my current titles and save up for a collectors edition version of Prime 4, and or a pro controller??? OOOOOO

@manu0 Concerning translations-- they can't just ask anybody if the translation is fine. Legally, businesses have to pay people who provide services to them. Translations would fall under this-- it is one of the reasons websites use google and such to translate such things.